The present invention relates to systems and processes for the environmentally safe disposal of infectious medical waste.
The safe disposal of infectious medical waste has become a major environmental and public safety concern in recent years. Public safety concerns include the spread of disease by the indiscriminate disposal of infectious medical waste in municipal landfills, or by dumping at sea. A major environmental danger concerns many substandard medical waste incinerators operated at hospitals across the United States. Usually concentrated in populous urban areas, these facilities each year emit tons of toxins into the atmosphere, including dioxins, furans, heavy metals, and acid gases. The current state of medical waste disposal in the United States is chronicled by Hershkowitz, Alan, "Without a Trace: Handling Medical Waste Safely", MIT Technology Review, August/September 1990, incorporated herein by reference.
Under current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules, medical waste must be both treated to substantially remove or reduce any biological hazard and destroyed so that it is no longer generally recognizable as medical waste. After the waste has been treated and destroyed in this way, the EPA does not require it to be tracked and it may be disposed of in the same manner as ordinary garbage.